his work : I So much is absolutely certain, that Himyar
(Arabia) then possessed almost the whole of East
Africa. Such a possession, however, was not won in
a night, but rather presupposes, in those old times,
without cannon and without powder, centuries of
exertion.’
Arabian writers of the ninth and tenth centuries
a .d . frequently allude to the gold of Sofala; but to
the Western world this country was a blank until
Portuguese enterprise again opened it out. John II,
of Portugal sent Pedro de Covilham and Alfonso de
Payva in 1487 to Cairo to gather information concerning
a route to India by the Cape. It is not at all
unlikely that Covilham heard from the Arabs reports
concerning the gold country behind Sofala; but suffix
cient evidence to this effect is not forthcoming. He
died in Abyssinia, and never returned to Portugal to
tell in person his experiences. At any rate, ten years
later the Cape was rounded by the Portuguese, and
Yasco da Gama in all the ports he called at on the
east coast of Africa found Arab traders established,
who told bim about the gold. The next expedition,
under Alvarez de Cahal in 1505, found Sofala, and in
its harbour two Arab dhows laden with gold.
The Portuguese commander, Pedro de Nhaya, took
possession of the town of Sofala in the name of the
King of Portugal and garrisoned the old Arab fort
there, and with this act began the modern history of
this country, about which a veil of mystery had hung
from the very beginning of time. That ■ the Arabs
were confined to the coast at this period is evident
t
from Duarte Barbosa’s remarks, who wrote in 1514 :
* The merchants bring to Sofala the gold which they
.sell to the Moors (the name applied to the Arabs by
the Portuguese), without weighing Tt, for coloured
stuffs, and beads of Cambay.’
Before discussing the Portuguese accounts of this
; country, let us linger a little longer amongst the
Arabs, and see what we can get from them about the
inhabitants of this district and the irruption of the
wild Zindj tribes over it, which probably caused the
destruction of the earlier civilisation. Zaneddin
Omar ibn 1’ Wardi’ gives us an account of these Zindj.
He wrote in the 336th year of the Hegira, and tells
us that / their habitations extend from the extremity
of the gulf to the low land of gold, Sofala ’t il Dhab,’
and remarks on a peculiarity of theirs, namely, that
4 they sharpen their teeth and polish them to a point.’
He goes, on to sa y :.‘ Sofala ’t i l Dhab adjoins the
eastern borders of the Zindj . . . the most remarkable
produce of this country is its quantity of native
gold, that is found in pieces of two or three meskalla,
in spite of which the natives generally adorn their
persons with ornaments of brass.’ He also states
that iron is found in this country and that the natives
have skill in working it, and adds that ‘ ships come
from India to fetch it.’ This shows us the origin of
the skill still possessed by the natives in smelting iron,
which has been handed down from generation to
generation.
El Masoudi, who has been called the Herodotus of
Arabia, gives us still further details about the race,